ScaleGuard 4: We Were All Isekai'd to a GameLit Fantasy World Page 3

  “Right,” I managed as I stood shakily to my feet, “let’s not do that again.”

  Then I looked up and realized we were not alone.

  The cavern was full of little tents and lean-to shelters, and all around us, spears and daggers grasped tightly in their hands, were little lizard people. All their eyes were on us and the portal we’d just stepped through, which was even now dying down and losing its glow.

  “Oh,” Lyra said. “Kobolds.”

  IV

  Here There Be Dragons

  OK, so: kobolds.

  There we were, having just passed through a magical portal, standing in a big cave surrounded by an underground village full of tiny dragon dudes. Said tiny dragon dudes were watching us with wide-eyed alarm, and a few were gripping onto little crudely made weapons with their shaking hands.

  Meanwhile, we were holding our weapons and standing cautiously, watching the kobolds as they in turn watched us. Both sides just stood there, tense and still, each waiting for the moment when the other would make the first move.

  “Wait!”

  A kobold with dull-yellow scales who was hunched over a walking stick pushed his way through the crowd. One of his eyes was missing, with a nasty-looking scar over where it should have been, and he looked up at us with his one good eye. “One of you is a Champion of a god, yes?”

  “Um, yeah,” I said, still in a ready stance. The tense atmosphere had been diminished a little by the old kobold, but I still didn’t want to take any chances. “That’s me: Gideon Trent. Champion of Sobek. Call me Gids.”

  The old kobold bowed. It was a surprisingly graceful motion for such a gnarled-looking figure. “We have no quarrel with you, Champion,” he said. “Please, accept our hospitality and pass through our village in peace. Two other Champions have already passed through.”

  I blinked. “Seriously?” I asked. “Already? When did they come through?”

  “The Champion of Thor passed through with his retinue of five yesterday afternoon,” the old kobold said. “And then the Champion of Amaterasu made her journey with her retinue of two late last night. Now, we welcome you, Champion of Sobek and your retinue of three and…” He glanced at the two mummified owlbear monstrosities. “...pets.”

  “Great,” I muttered. “We’re gonna be the last ones there.”

  “Retinue?” Kono asked.

  I smirked at her. “No one was talking to you, retainer.”

  “Oh fuck off.”

  Ignoring Kono, I addressed the old kobold. “Alright, cool. Sorry, what’s your name?”

  “I am Snee, elder of this village.”

  “Awesome.” I realized I was still holding my axes at the ready, and I relaxed. “Could you point us in the direction of the Dragon Lord’s Temple, please?”

  Snee nodded. “Follow the path out of the cavern, and turn right at the first fork. You shall see the Temple atop a nearby mountain. Simply follow the path down the valley and up to that peak.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You are most welcome, Champion of Sobek,” Snee replied. “But I must warn you: the path is treacherous. Dragons roost in these mountains, and other kobold tribes have turned to banditry to survive. And the Temple itself hosts even more dangers.”

  “Yeah, legendarily dangerous Dungeon. I know.”

  Snee shook his head. “Not just that. In recent months, a prophetess has taken up residence there. She has gathered followers from all the tribes, including, I am sad to say, a few wayward souls from my own. This new cult awaits the return of Golur Darveth, the Lord of Dragons, and do not take kindly to outsiders.”

  “Of course they don’t,” I muttered. “Thanks for the warning. Anything else you can tell me about this prophetess?”

  “I have only seen her once,” said Snee. “But she is human, with long golden hair, and she wears spectacles like that one.” He gestured to Vee.

  Something icy grabbed my heart.

  I turned to Vaingloria, and saw that she looked even paler than usual. Her eyes were wide with shock, and she stared unseeing at Snee.

  “Oh.” I said. “Well… at least she’s on brand.”

  The rest of the ScaleGuard looked equally surprised, and on everyone’s faces I saw worry and a little trace of eagerness.

  We all knew that description. It was Acedia.

  Vee’s sister was here.

  *

  “It may not necessarily be her,” Lyra said as he walked out of the cave mouth and down the mountain path, surrounded on both sides by natural stone walls that towered high above us. “I’m certain there are many blonde women with glasses.”

  “Who also make a habit of starting cults dedicated to resurrecting ancient evils?” Kono asked. “It’s literally the same thing she was doing under Heliosor.”

  “But we don’t know for sure,” Lyra pointed out.

  “It’s her,” Vaingloria muttered. Her eyes had that far-off distant look to them, such that I was surprised she was aware enough of her surroundings to actually follow us. “I’m certain of it. Acedia is in the Dragon Lord’s Temple.”

  “So,” I said, “same deal as with the Plague Lord? Trying to reanimate a long dead super-monster to use a figurehead so she can conquer the world?”

  “Probably,” Vee replied. Her voice hardened. “I will have my revenge this time. The Mistress of the Dark Arts will not be denied again.”

  Vaingloria and Acedia were twin orphans, raised and taught necromancy by a man named Mordrus. I wasn’t 100% clear on the exact details, but apparently Acedia started doing some extracurricular zombifying, and when Mordrus caught her she murdered him before her sister’s horrified eyes and ran away.

  We’d first met Vaingloria in the sewers beneath Heliosor, where she’d tracked down her evil twin. Acedia was running a cult of vermi-- rat people-- who were trying to resurrect their ancient tyrant, the Plague Lord. Her goal had been to bring the Plague Lord back as her undead servant and use him to start an empire with herself as empress.

  One thing had led to another and we’d managed to destroy the resurrected Plague Lord, but not before Acedia had teleported away. We’d promised Vee we’d help bring her sister to justice, but there’d been no leads as to where she’d gone.

  According to Snee she’d moved in a few months ago… fuck, she’d been in the Draconic Mountains this whole time.

  “Well, the good news is we’re storming her new stronghold anyway,” I said. “And so are some other guys at the same time. So while we’re in the process of conquering the Dungeon, we’ll also take some time to show Acedia what for, yeah?”

  Vee blinked and smiled at me. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, my wicked sister shall know our wrath and rue the day that slew our father.”

  “That’s the spirit,” said Kono. “So how long do you think it’ll take us to actually get to the Temple?”

  “That probably depends on wherever the fuck we are right now,” I said.

  “According to Snee, the Dragon Lord’s Temple is located on another mountain entirely,” said Lyra. “So it may be quite the trek.”

  “My question is how will we even know we’re going the right…” I trailed off as we stepped out of the stone walls and beheld the Draconic Mountains in all their glory.

  They were… craggy. I think that’s the right word. The mountains were jagged and sharp and rose up at odd angles. It was as if someone had hurled a massive stone into the ground and shattered it, and the mountains were the various shards embedded into the earth.

  Mist coiled about each sharp rocky formation, covering the valleys below. Vegetation was scarce, and I wondered how anything could possibly survive in this barren, stony range.

  Then I saw what was on the mountain in front of us, and I wondered how anyone had ever managed to build, well… that.

  Toward the base of the mountain, or at least as close as we could see above the sea of mists, was a massive dome, apparently carved directly out of the rock. Four towers rose up from that dome, extending nearly to the peak of the mountain itself. The rest of the mountain curved away from and above the dome and its towers, almost like a rolling ocean wave, and from the peak had been carved a massive stone acropolis; all Greek-looking pillars and a triangular roof, with a huge statue of a dragon perched atop and around it. How one was supposed to get up there without flying, I had no idea.

  “Is that…?” I started to ask.

  “Yes,” said Vaingloria. She sounded breathless. “That is the Dragon Lord’s Temple, the most dangerous known Dungeon in all of Crucible.”

  “OK,” I said. “Cool. So, uh, we walk down this path and across the valley and up the path of that mountain, right?”

  “That’s what Snee said,” Lyra pointed out.

  We all just stood there like dumbasses, gawking at the sheer size of the thing. It was practically the whole mountain itself. And we were supposed to conquer that?

  “Well.” Kono cleared her throat. “I guess we should get a move one.”

  I nodded, and noticed movement out of the corner of my eye. I turned my head to the right and felt my eyes widen.

  Two dragons were soaring in the sky above the mountains. As I watched, one twisted in the air and dove down, vanishing behind the rocky peaks. The other kept flying. It flew around the Temple and continued on its path, wings outstretched and tail trailing behind it, gradually lowering its altitude until it disappeared into the mists below.

  “There are dragons all over these mountains,” said Vee.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I noticed.”

  “Pretty sure that’s why they call them the Draconic Mountains,” Kono observed dryly.

  “Let’s just… try not to piss off too many giant flying fire-breathing lizards on our way to the Dungeon, alright?” I suggested.

  Kono shrugged. “Sounds like a plan.”

  “Um,” said Vaingloria, “what about giant flying poison-spitting serpents?”

  I blinked. “I mean, I wouldn’t want to piss any of those off either. Why?”

  Vee pointed to our right, where I’d seen the two dragons come from. “Because there are three wyverns flying towards us.”

  “Oh,” I said. I followed the direction of her finger and saw that, indeed, a trio of big snake monsters with giant bat wings were making a beeline in our direction. “Yeah, that’s probably not good.”

  V

  Path to the Dungeon

  The lead wyvern opened its mouth and screeched at us.

  They looked kind of like over-sized cobras. Except that cobras didn’t have hind legs or giant wings and I’m pretty sure their eyes didn’t glow red. Of course, I don’t think I’d seen many cobras up close, so I could be wrong.

  As the wyvern in front screeched out an awful, shrill sound like nails on a chalkboard, the other two turned and flew wide. Goddamn, the fuckers were trying to flank us.

  And, given that we were standing on a mountain path overlooking a pretty steep drop into misty oblivion, we didn’t have a lot of room to maneuver and avoid these bastards.

  “Magic Missile!” Vee pointed her staff at the shrieking wyvern, and green lights flew from it, splashing against its chest. The wyvern beat its wings and backed up in surprise, then shrieked again.

  The wyvern flanking us to our left opened its jaws and spat out a glob of steaming black… tar… stuff. Kono grabbed me and pulled me back, and the two of us just barely managed to avoid the splash of poisonous goo. Fuck, that shit smelled foul.

  “OK, asshole,” I mumbled, “that was just rude.”

  I threw my left ax at it, then wound back and threw my right. The first ax just barely missed the wyvern’s head, while the second cut directly through the webbing of its wing. The wyvern screeched in shock and tried to turn, but it was all wobbly now that its wing was damaged. The axes returned and smashed right into its back.

  Flailing wildly, the wyvern crashed into the side of the mountain above us and collapsed in a heap on the path. Kono wasted no time in charging it and burying her daggers into the creature’s long neck as it tried to return to flight. I recalled my axes to my hands.

  Seeing their companion get totally wrecked, the other wyverns immediately changed course and dove for the foxgirl, apparently intent on saving their comrade. Luckily, we had Lyra with us.

  She pointed her sword at one of the wyverns, and holy light emanated from the blade. The glow was mirrored on the wyvern’s hood, and it instantly turned its head and locked its red eyes on the paladin.

  The divinely challenged wyvern forgot all about Kono and diverted its flight path straight to Lyra. Behind it, the other wyvern reached our Ghostwalker, but she dove off the now-dead grounded wyvern and rolled away. Her assailant tried to spit a glob of poison at her, but its aim went wide as Vee’s owlbear mummies attacked it.

  One grabbed its leg, while the other managed to get a beak on its wing. Together, they managed to pull the wyvern down as it beat at them futilely. Meanwhile, the other wyvern tried to bite Lyra’s head off, but she brought her sword up just in time to deflect the blow and cut a nasty slice across the monster’s jaw.

  Feeling like a total one-trick-pony, I threw an ax at both wyverns. They thunked into the serpents’ hides, and then tore themselves free and returned to my hands, like they do. Yay.

  “Reinforce Undead! Vengeful Spirits!”

  Vaingloria whirled about, her staff pointing this way and that. One of the owlbear mummies glowed purple for a moment, and then jerked the terrified wyvern completely down to earth, smashing it against the dirt below. The two mummies were on it in an instant, tearing into the beast before Kono even had a chance to join them. Meanwhile, a trio of howling ghosts that resembled translucent skeletons wrapped in tattered rags flew from the tip of her staff and assaulted the wyvern focused on Lyra, their bony claws raking its hide open and drawing beads of scarlet blood.

  The wyvern shrieked and beat its wings back, creating gusts of wind that nearly knocked us flat on our asses. As it tried to retreat, Lyra jumped forward and cut a line of blood across its stomach. With another shriek of pain, the wyvern lashed out with its talons, the blunt edge of one smacking her in the face.

  I rushed at the retreating wyvern and threw both my axes at it as hard as I could. They struck it where Lyra had cut its belly, and the force of the impact, combined with the blades on the ax-heads, opened the wound completely. As the axes returned to my hands, the wyvern literally spilled its guts, and then plummeted into the mists below.

  OK. So that was gross.

  “Everyone alright?” I asked.

  “I think I’ll have a black eye,” Lyra muttered, rubbing her face. “But otherwise I’m fine.”

  “No complaints here,” said Kono.

  “It will take more than a few flying snakes to bring down the Mistress of the Dark Arts!”

  “Cool,” I said. “So, uh, let’s get a move on to that Temple, yeah?”

  *

  It took four hours for us to reach the foot of the mountain.

  Not the mountain with the Dragon Lord’s Temple on it, mind you-- the mountain that the Godsway had deposited us on. The fucking thing was huge and the path wounded and twisted and looped around it like a tangled ball of yarn or something.

  On the plus side, we didn’t run into any more wyverns. And we somehow managed to avoid stumbling into the lairs of any pissed off dragons. Plus the path was pretty wide so it was easy to avoid falling off the edge of any cliffs. So it wasn’t really a treacherous descent. It was just, like, a really goddamn slow one.

  And to top it all off, it wasn’t even all that rewarding to reach the bottom either. The valley below turned out to be a barren wasteland; just rocks and dirt and trees that looked like they’d been pretty badly charred. Three guesses by what.

  “Fuck,” I muttered as we walked past the third clump of blackened trees that had once probably been a really nice grove before they got burninated, “what do those kobolds even do for food around here?”

  “Most of the local ecology is subterranean,” Vee said absently. She kept looking up in the direction of the Dragon Lord’s Temple, as if she expected her sister to be floating in the fog, cackling madly. “So the kobolds likely subsist on a diet of roots, mushrooms, and burrowing animals like moles and gophers and grubs.”

  “OK,” I said. “So what about the dragons? And the wyverns? What the hell do they eat around here?”

  “Adventurers,” Kono deadpanned.

  Lyra actually laughed.

  “I don’t actually know about the wyverns,” said Vaingloria. “But dragons can survive on coal and other minerals, as well as meat.”

  “Wait, seriously?” I asked. “Dragons eat rocks?”

  Vaingloria shrugged. She was looking up at the fog again.

  That was probably the worst part about the Draconic Mountains: the fog and mist. It was like a blanket in the air halfway up the mountains. From above, it looked like a sea of dull clouds that completely obscured the ground. From below? It was a constant haze that blotted out the sun and hid the towering peaks above from sight.

  It made everything seem even more grey than the blasted wasteland would usually be. And that, in turn, gave it an even stronger sense of lifelessness. It didn’t really contribute anything to the atmosphere so much as it enhanced what was already there. And what was already there was desolation.

  I couldn’t wait to get back above the mists. At least there was some goddamn sunlight up there.

  At some point we came across a rocky stream that filtered out into a little pond below an outcropping of boulders. Seeing as we’d been walking for fuck-knows-how-long and the haze above was starting to get noticeably darker, we decided that it was as good a place as any to camp out for a bit.

  When night fell, the quiet that dominated the valley seemed to fade. I spent my turn at watch listening to distant roars and shrieks from high up in the mountains. No clue why the dragons and wyverns decided that nighttime was the best time for making noise. Maybe they were mating calls or something?